Eating French Fries Linked To Higher Death Rate

A new study finds that eating fried potatoes at least twice a week is associated with an increased risk of death.

Unfried potatoes, like those baked and mashed, or potato salad, did not appear to have the same risk.

The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, looked at potato consumption in 4,400 older people between ages 45 and 79 over the course of eight years. By the end of the study, 236 people had died.

After adjusting for several factors, eating potatoes overall (even a lot of them) did not increase a person’s risk for death. But when researchers looked more closely at the types of potatoes people were eating, they found that eating fried potatoes—including French fries, fried potatoes and hash browns—at least two times per week was linked to a more than doubled risk of death.